Crush the spruce. Pour the boiling water over them and allow to cool to lukewarm. Add the yeast and honey. Let it ferment for 1-2 days, strain. Spruce tips are rich in vitamin C and make a healthy and bright-flavoured mead.

British websites refer to this as “Spruce mead”

A fast-food version of this involves putting some fresh spruce tips in your Finlandia vodka.

I suffer from a lifelong psychological problem. The thought of scraping slimy things from shells then putting them in my mouth makes me feel a tad queasy.

Shellfish already removed from its shell, then disguised within a pre-pepared food dish, is not a problem.

Paella? Yummy!

Mussels in thier shells? um… err….ooo….ah…. excuse me….

This year I’ve made some progress. For the first time I’ve been able to eat, direct from their shells, some Scallops and some Oysters. Mussels are still posing a problem. Maybe the darkness of the shell has an effect….

It was the sort of party where the men wore ironed shirts, ties and jackets. When a new guest walked into the room everyone stood up and rearranged themselves so that the more senior people in the room were sure to have a seat, with no fuss. The host constantly circulated checking and filling people’s glasses and making sure they were introduced to people nearby. I was glad I’d taken the trouble to wear my smarter clothes, a tailored boating jacket over white Jaeger jeans

As the amazingly perky 90 year old lady next to me showed me the plaster cast of her broken wrist and listed other recently broken bones she smiled, adding that she was glad I was wearing slacks too. The chirpiness of her conversation was contageoius, and inspiring given the clear deterioration of her body

A Magician moved from table to table, playing a range of tricks and gently encouraging guest to talk with those people near them. He wore a black suit with pink pink shirt, tie and pinstripes. I watched the magician, found out how other people knew the hosts, mingled…

It was a real pleasure to be part of this civilised event, so different from informal parties hosted by my peers

Driving the back roads from Dungeness to Reading I stumbled across the Carr-Taylor vinyard and spent a good morning in the sunshine with the staff and chipper terriers. We wandered around the Vinyard, sat and tasted wines at long tables in the wineshop, talked about the history and workings of their business. They made me feel like a special guest more than a tourist and shopper. They mainly sell wine through local stores because they can’t produce sufficient quantities to supply supermarket chains.

English vineyards produce high quality white wines, meads and champagnes.

It was good fun choosing different wines to bring home as gifts for different people, Prune wine for my brother’s birthday, Elderberry wine for mother’s day, Ginger wine for cheese with friends…

This spirng I’ll be visiting the vineyard near Reading town, it has a beautiful chataeu – Stanlake Park

All my adult life I’ve popped into restaurants, cafes, bars without being accompanited by another person. yes, ALONE. Iet out in public alone. Somehow I’d managed to miss that this is not something people easily do.

Then Mr. London Street wrote a blog post encouraging his readership to eat alone. He mentioned that this doesn’t instantly appeal and may be stigmatised. At first I was baffled. What is this stigma? Why would someone not want to eat in a restaurant alone? I thought, poor chap I wonder what is wrong with him to make him think and feel like that. Then his readers comments showed he was describing something they recognised and understood. A shared experience for many, though not all, of them.

If eating alone in restaurants was once difficult for me, I’ve forgotten it. I have noticed how being a lone customer in a restaurant has changed over the decades. In the early 1990’s staff would show me to a seat out of sight, towards the back of the restaurant. As if a woman eating alone in a restaurant was indeed stigmatised. In those days, with my mobile phone, book, and note pad I was happy with good light, good food and some table space for sketching. Now, in the naughties, I am more often seated near the window, as if the sight of a single woman eating in their restaurant is a positive thing. Still happy with my notepad, handheld, book and now with a digital camera.

I drop by Mr. London St‘s blog occassionally because his writing appears to tap into something that his readers empathise with and admire. He lives in Reading town, but not in the same place I live. He often writes things that his commenters empathise with, but I don’t. Consequently, his writing often makes me feel unique, even special.

It’s here , its now and it’s not just for the birds. In the US I made my custard from egg yolks, caster sugar, cream, vanilla and cornflour according to Delia Smith. This involved time, skill and concentrtion. In the UK I get instant gratification from birds.

Friend in Cairo: we’re meeting a man on the street corner to pick up some bacon

We loitered on a street corner. An old mecedes pulled up, a Egyptain looking man wearing very dark sunglasses, smoking a cigarette, got out of the car holding an unmarked white bag. He looked at us, at my blonde friend and called her name. She walked over.

As a muslim country, rearing pigs, slaughtering them and distributing thier meat is not a high demand business. Listening to my friend and the man talk I heard the fear of the non-muslim.

Friend in Cairo: the children at my school think that you catch swine-flu from pigs, they don’t realise that you catch it from people

The Christians keep pigs, eat pigs. Pig farming in Egypt has stopped. My friend’s bacon supplier talked about how his pig farms used to be hidden in the heart of christian areas, or ex-pat communities (Americans) where the locals don’t worry about them. But now, since swine flu, it’s not safe, people break into the farms and kill the pigs. Now he imports his bacon from other countries.

The man offered us a lift to our next stop, the Cairo antiquities Museum. As he drove he told us his story. He was a native born Egyptian. He left Egypt at 19 to live in the US. There for 20 years. His Egyptain wife missed home so they moved back in 2008. He misses America. He misses the way people drive. Business is getting tougher. He talked to my friend about how she managed to find him. They shared names and places, they were friends of friends in the community of non-muslims.

Picking up the Bacon was so much more symbolic than simply putting food on the table.

Warning: bad taste food post, do not read on if you have a weak stomach.

Alone in a restaruant at lunch time in the daylight. Local people, mostly Muslims, were fasting for Eid. The sea food in this Alexandria restaurant tasted fabulous

I wisely didn’t eat the shrimps

The food poisoning was loitering somewhere-else, probably the salad. Such a tasty salad. I had to cancel my camping trip in the desert because I needed to stay close to something that could deal with high speed bodily emissions. Sigh.

Spotty dog: last night you said you were going to give up drinking, become a vergetarian, start cooking and join a gym

Wendy: gosh, I was in a good mood, you realise this is a progressive plan, one thing at a time, each is conditional upon achieving the step before, do you want a glass of champers with the mister man cup cake?

This is the first in a series, YAY A SERIES! of Wednesday Wendy Experience Survey reports, bringing you the scores on the doors on products and services that could affect your happiness and health.

A recently published scientific study gives preliminary indications that Yorkie bars are a consumer health risk when they scored a shockingly low* 23% on the Wendy International Standard for Experiences (WISE). People in possession or a Yorkie bar should return it to the point of sale and seek a refund with compensation for emotional distress.

Study summary:

An expert Wendy** was given a Yorkie bar then observed while she conducted an end-to-end*** experience assessment covering

Unwrapping. Successful. Despite no instructions to talk out loud the Wendy talked out loud about the text on the wrapper. Unwrapped in 7 seconds. unwrapping involved no false-starts or error routes.

chunk-breaking. Failure. After attempting to break a single chunk off the bar with two hands and failing the Wendy resorted to using the edge of the table to break the first chunk of chocolate from the bar. Towards the end of the bar the Wendy used her teeth to bite-off single chunks, this involved an average of 3-bites per chunk.

Dunking. The Wendy added an unaticipated use of the chocolate bar when she tried dunking the bar in her tea between bites.

* Any product producing a FAFFAUCEP scores below 30% is provisionall designated a health hazard by the Wendy International Standard for Experiences (WISE) .

** due to research funding constraints the data for this study was provided by one Wendy, we recommend that at least 5, ideally 10 Wendy’s are used to enhanve the reliability and validity of published results. We are currently recruiting volunteer Wendy’s to participate in future studies. You can volunteer by contacting the Wendy House either through a blog post comment or writing directly to Wendy at Whendeee[at]hotmail[dot]com

*** purchase and pooping process were not included in this assessment and may impact the FAFFAUCEP score either up or down.

7am on our non-sailing day on Ios while the rest of the crew slept I found some deliciously freshly baked pain au chocolate in the port Bakery. The merchandising of bakery goods at this early (late?) hour implies some party island requirements.

All day large ferries docked in the harbour and hundreds of young adults with backpacks and wheely-suitcases rolled on and off.

‘run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the gingerbread man’

I have fond memories of this traditional story (fable?) at home and primary school. Recently, I found this little chap in the canteen at work, a real treat on a hectic day. He escaped the hungry keyboard, computer, and phone but was no match for foxy silver-haired me.

Also known in the US as ‘Energy bars’. Not a way of describing the throughput of electricity to an electronic device.

High sugar-content (energy) biscuits in a bar shape marketed in the US as a lifestyle accessory for highly active people (Walkers, cyclists, etc). Similar products in the UK appear to be marketed as breakfast bars and stocked next to the breakfast cereals in supermarkets. I suspect they are breakfast replacements for fast-moving executives, children and aspiring anorexics.

A local Holland and Barratt shop lured me in with this ‘Love bar’. I subsequently discovered that the advertising is naughty because Gillian McKieth cannot legally call herself a Doctor in the UK. Her Dr. qualification is reportedly from a correspondence course with a non-acredited US University. The Guardian reported on her naughty non-truths and misleading product information back in 2007. In 2008 she’s still using the title Dr. on product packaging and making questionable claims about their ‘health’ impact…

Sweeny Todd offers a gigantic range of different pies at the pictured local Reading Pie Shop and a very dark film, most distubing gory visual details, I had to look away on multiple occassions and I’m not that squeamish.